Blink
by Alas Poor Yorcake
Summary: One-shot! The Doctor dares not blink.


**A/N: Well, well, well, look what we have here. Eleven stories that I could be touching up on, and I create a twelfth. In any case, it wasn't on purpose and has undergone an appropriate amount of NO revision. So, basically, fruits of my mind's labor.**

 **[Oh, and I recently got into Hamlet. David Tennant's interpretation = Alpha +. There's a bit of Hamlet in here, but there's a bit of Hamlet everywhere, so nothing different.]**

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The Doctor dares not blink.

If he does, he's not sure what he'd see. Burning, dying, nightmares - have all become the norm, the daily, the average boring Thursday afternoon. He takes companion after companion, civilization after civilization, and watches them burn collectively, as one being, as a testament to the Doctor's wrath. The Doctor's revenge.

He dares not to ask himself who he's avenging, lest he looks in that one mirror with the razors behind and sees the true solution to his problem. Everyone's problem.

Yes, everyone's, because the Doctor's made it everyone's problem. Whatever the Doctor hears, says, does, it's in his nature to deflect. He deflects the petty insults thrown at him by enemies who, once a long time ago, seemed more honorable, deflects the questions and glances of his companions as they ask like there's not a reason he hasn't willingly talked to them about it before, deflects the silence in his head as best he can before it parallels to the noise in the Master's head, everlasting, always there, drumming an empty drumbeat to a universe that doesn't have the proper incentive to listen.

Detach and deflect was his motto when he brought down species in favor of saving humans, was his motto when he brought down universes in favor of saving his species, was his motto when he brought down humans in favor of saving himself. Detach from the _speciesuniversehumanshimself_ because if not, there's no one to deflect on without the decrepit chains of guilt after guilt after guilt after nothing.

His deflections got more recognizable during the War. He deflected blame of deaths onto Daleks and Time Lords and everyone but himself until no one else was alive to blame. His deflections morphed from subtle thoughts and small manipulations to words because words held so much more power than weapons or enemies or reality and words can be used without substance to substantiate them; like him, empty and hollow and echoing silence between foggy outlines of existence.

His deflections change from a right to a privilege. A fist raised in justice eroded into a gun that can only be pointed forward never back because if it did it would be the right thing to do and who is he to judge what the right thing is with the multitudes, plethoras, enormities of blood and people and monsters and his own species on his hands?

There is nothing more delicate than a mind, and the eyes are the pathway to the soul so he should keep them shuttered, should take a wrench to his sockets, let no one see him, let no one hurt him ever again.

He doesn't deserve it. The pain, he does deserve, the loss of a most plentiful sense, most definitely, but there is no punishment like Hope. Hope is when he meets Rose and Mickey and Jackie and Jack and Martha and Donna and Wilfred and Koschei ("The Master," though with all of the Doctor's knowledge of every language in the universe, he still has to manually translate his name before he uses it.) and even Rassilon in that minute and a half when the silence was gone and the voices were there and he wanted to join absolution and feel himself rising above to another plane of living -

Ay, there's the rub.

Another plane of living still constitutes as living. And if there was one thing that the War had changed about the Doctor, it was his life.

He travelled with humans before, to show them the universe. He travels with them now to keep himself in check, and as penance (they keep him alive, whether he likes it or not.). He will travel with them in the future to have someone to look upon who can enjoy life and truly loves being alive in hopes that one day he will feel the same.

Rassilon thought the Doctor had the ability to hold that vitality, that will to live, within himself even after the War.

Rassilon miscalculated.

The only flaw in his plan was that he thought the Doctor didn't want to die. Rassilon could understand the universe like no other being, the Doctor supposed, but when it came to the species in it, he was as clueless as a stranger left out in the cold, blinking into the dying streetlamp and wishing away the painful thoughts.

The Doctor dares not blink.

Far too many possibilities present themselves at the opportunity. When he stares for just long enough until his eyes water up, he is able to squint until reality becomes a blurred bubble and he can almost pretend that the reds are pieces of the sky, the whites are the twin suns shining in the distance, the blues are the garments of the guards surrounding the citadel, the greens are the blooming flowers that decorate the old buildings that have stood since the beginning of time.

The Doctor dares not blink, lest the illusion fade and cold reality sweeps him off of his feet.

He has heard about, seen, caused (all the same thing, really,) civilizations and planets and galaxies and universes to fall, and he has grieved his fair share of grief. He has watched people burn and freeze and cease to exist, a meager entertainment acting as an intermission between strikes in a War that raged across everything. He has burnt his own kind with a bitter unraveling of a heart-string and a ragged puzzle of a thought _("Good riddance,")_ and in return he was offered his life in a blink of an eye. He pushed a button and felt his life flash before his eyes, his cold, closed eyes, _blink_. He saw people die in the blink of his eye.

The Doctor dares not blink, lest he blink and find the future (present) which he had killed his species to avoid.

He speaks to Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack, Wilfred, and the Master about Gallifrey and his despicable deed, and their reactions are all different. But all the same, the Doctor dares not blink. Silence speaks far more than words, but words are all the hollow man has that define his undefinable outline, so he talks as if the words he's using have never meant to have any other purpose but to shape the image of this, this hell, this heaven, this guilt. And he never blinks.

The Doctor dares not blink, lest the back of his eyelids conceal mirrors pointed to his soul.

For then his eyes shall be purged thick, amber and plum-tree gum, his face shall wrinkle, his wit shall fray, and he that _wither, wither, wither:_

 _Blink._

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 **A/N: Alright, that's all I've got. I'm working on a little project for Doctor Who, but most of it is headcanons and plot bunnies, so if you're at all interested in reading it, contact me and I'll post it.**

 **Hope you enjoyed, and leave a review if you could spare five minutes and perhaps a few clacks on your keyboard. Peace out!**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


End file.
